Yeah I understand that "skating clean" isnt really a part of PCS. However, it sure does influence the minds of judges if a skater sckates clean as opposed to making mistakes. Take Virtue/Moir and Savchenko/Szolkowy for example. i believe they both recieved 10s (if no 9.75 or something) and the fact that they skated a clean and perfect program helped them to garner such a score.
Well, since 10 is a "perfect" score, you're never going to see it for performances that are obviously flawed. But you're almost never going to see that score anyway.
Most of the times we're talking about 8s vs. 7s or something like that. And those scores are built up by all the things that the skater does well throughout the whole program. Not everybody starts at the same level, and the reason for that is how well they meet all the bullet points. Skaters who do a lot of those things well enough to earn high scores sometimes tend to do most of them well most of the time, with some fluctuation depending on how "on" they are during each performance. And skaters who do most of those things well tend to place well, especially when they also hit all their elements. So those are the skaters who consistently get high scores. They also tend to be the skaters who have positive reputations, because they tend to skate well and place well. But the source of the high scores is the all the things that they still do especially well even when they make a few mistakes, more than reputation from past performances.
I do think it's possible that judges are significantly influenced by the first few criteria of the Skating Skills component and that a skater who does especially well in those areas may get higher scores across the board than a skater who is weaker in those areas but just as strong in some of the other components. But again, that halo effect comes not so much from past performance/reputation as from the fact that the whole performance looks more impressive up close when it's skated with that kind of effortless power.
Most mistakes take less than a second, or just a couple of seconds, and then are forgotten as the skater continues with the program. In those cases the effect on the PCS would be very negligible -- maybe judges would give 0.25 or 0.5 less on some components than they would have given for the exact same performance without the mistakes.
Visible mistakes might have a negative effect on Performance/Execution in that while they were occurring the clarity of movement would have been interrupted. Or some judges might interpret the "Execution" part of that component as including the execution of the elements.
Mistakes on steps or in-between skating might have a negative effect on Skating Skating skills.
Sometimes a bad performance will be much worse than what the skater is capable of in a good performance. E.g., if the skater gives up and stops presenting the performance to the audience, drops the arms and lets posture sag, starts skating slower and more cautiously, stops relating to the music, leaves out choreography, gets sloppy or lethargic on moves that are successfully completed (e.g., weaker jump landings or spin positions, slower spins), etc., etc.
If a skater lets a number of those weaknesses creep in, then you might expect lower PCS than when s/he's skating well, even without significant mistakes.
